Things That Have Always Been True About Me

1. I like people. You can quibble about introversion and extroversion, and the fact that I consider people with certain characteristics to be intolerable, but I really do like people, in general. I consider them to be interesting and stimulating. Hell, if I don't have to put up with them personally, I even like the people with the intolerable characteristics. Because of the interesting.

2. I have always felt young. That doesn't mean I've always felt youthful, mind. But even lately, when I've been feeling like an old fogey who can't get her life together around the gaggles of first years, I look at people who have moved into the "real world" and it's like there's a giant, gaping chasm between me and them. I don't know if this one will continue to be true through the next decade or so of my life. I guess, ideally, I want the feeling young to go away without being replaced by the feeling old.

3. I am smart. Not to be self-important or anything. I'm certainly not the smartest person in the world or the smartest person I know. Sometimes it's fun, like in Grade 10 Enlgish class where I had two indulgent teachers and got to chatter on about my ideas. Not that I knew what I was talking about, what to call things. That's an awkward qualification of my intelligence--I am woefully uneducated about certain things. And sometimes it's not fun, like when I have to work with people who are on a different level than me and I get frustrated.

4. I am a product of my time. I am not the least bit anachronistic. The way I perceive things, what I believe about the universe and life and how I use social structures are all very much hallmarks of people from this period in history. I don't know how much of that is good and how much of it is bad. I also don't know if I'll get stuck at some point and wind up behind the times. As it stands now, though, I'm pretty happy with it.

5. I am paranoid. Not in a psychiatric this-is-a-major-problem kind of way, though. Rather, I'm a very private person. I believe that trust is a matter of choice and that anybody is capable of breaking trust. I do trust people, and I don't think there's anything of major relevance about myself that I've never told anyone in some way or another, but I hate being found or found out. It's a rational concept that I apply irrationally with the justification that it keeps life simpler for people to be kept uninformed about little things that can become a matter or putting two and two together. In some way or another.